Super Rugby
Brumbies dig deep for Cape Town win
June 21, 2015
Stormers 19-39 Brumbies (video available in Australia only)
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The Brumbies will rack up more frequent flyer points as they fly from South Africa and head to New Zealand after setting up a Super Rugby semi-final with the table-topping and well-rested Hurricanes in Wellington on Saturday. Brumbies skipper Stephen Moore isn't one to whinge and has backed his side to deal with the travel issues as they did on Sunday (AEST) when they produced a 39-19 qualifying final win over the Stormers at Newlands in Cape Town.

"There's no way around it," Moore said. "You've just got to dig deep and find that extra little bit. There's no avoiding the fact that's it's not ideal. You've got to travel halfway across the world and then fly to New Zealand and all those things are in play, but that's when the character of the side comes in... I'm confident after tonight's performance that there's enough character in the side to be able to take our game to another level which we are going to need to do."

The victory over the Stormers was set up by a sensational hat-trick of tries to winger Joe Tomane in the opening 25 minutes. However, the six-tries-to-one win over the South African conference winners came at a cost with winger Henry Speight given a red card for a dangerous tackle on a player without the ball when he appeared to flip Stormers centre Juan de Jongh onto his head in the 74th minute. He faces he likelihood of a suspension which could end his Super Rugby season.

Brumbies coach Stephen Larkham was delighted with his side's performance against the Stormers, who lacked punch without key forwards Duane Vermeulen and Schalk Burger, who failed a late fitness test.

"I'm very happy with that. Like I said before the game, we had a really short prep for this one, we had one day of training, there was no contact through the week for the boys, but tonight there was plenty of contact," Larkham said.

Moore was thrilled with the performance, particularly from the forwards with flanker David Pocock a standout, and vowed nothing would change in their approach in Wellington.

"We know we've got to keep playing our game, we've got to keep attacking," Moore said. "We are going to have to score points and we'll try and do that."

The Brumbies went down to 13 men with five minutes remaining when Scott Fardy was sin-binned for a professional foul, but the visitors still managed to score a try as fullback Jesse Mogg crashed over one minute from fulltime. Stormers five-eighth Demetri Catrakilis scored 14 points, including four penalty goals to keep his side in the game, while their only try came via an intercept to fullback Cheslin Kolbe five minutes into the second half.

© AAP

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